I have uploaded a maintenance version of HiddenChest a few minutes ago so I would recommend people that downloaded any version of it like last night to get the newest release for your own games' safety. Nah, your games won't get corrupted or anything else, it was just me that was falling asleep and made a couple of minor mistakes while editing the source files. Don't worry! I have fixed them already!

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It is curious how some stuff that seems to no longer be needed, ends up being called by a piece of code that I skipped editing. Now that I replaced some file with its original and untouched and pristine and boring and... OK, you got the idea, it works just as expected. Curiously this bug did not show up in the Linux version but only in Windows releases. O_O

Side notes: What a crazy night! I solved it while being kind of sick, not the night before when I was feeling better...

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Yeah, it's just another of my weird headings, I know. The curious thing about it is that it does make a lot of sense once you learn about what those manifests are. Let's start on how Linux finds its dependencies alias all the binary source files it requires to let the application run on such system.

The Linux Way

All Unix like OS's seems to follow the same logic, they depend on stuff like rpath to find default or custom so files on any specific location. You set rpath information and the application will look for it wherever the binary executables is located.

There is no real need to edit the $PATH global variable at all.

The Windows aka Nightmare Mode Way

In Windows (any version) you just can't depend on rpath to find dynamic libraries or dll's because nothing like that ever existed!

What do you do then?

You either have to place all dll's in the same directory as the executable file. (A gross style according to some emotionless South American forumer!)

You can compile some Manifest file, a pseudo XML file that will include "minimal" bloatware stuff only to tell the darn executable it can also look for dll's in a custom location without editing %PATH% manually. Sadly that's not the end of it. If your compiled manifest file includes illegal characters, nothing will ever warn you about it!! Nothing tells you that's a bug!! Still, you need to add another XML file also named a manifest to let your executable look for all the files you listed there.

Well, you can still edit the global %PATH% variable on windows, but you need to make sure the new path you are gonna add is located before it will read the default path for dll's. In few words you need to prepend it to the list of semi colon separated list of paths. Usually you wouldn't tell the average Windows user like the simple Lani to do that, especially if it's just for RGSS games.

In both cases, Linux and Windows, you can install the so's or dll's, but there's a risk of polluting your OS with different versions of common libraries, which is highly undesirable!!

The thing is that I only needed to update the binary executables for all Windows versions, guys!

You're right, I didn't need to waste so much time pasting information that's just won't make sense to the simple Lani kind of users.

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The decision SE is called @ok but it gets called as either Audio.play_decision or Audio.play_ok. It is the only exception here.

Well, now the latest version of HiddenChest (for Linux 64 bit and Windows 32 and 64 bit OS's) sets all those SE values for you at the very beginning. This means you only need to call stuff like Audio.play_buzzer to let the player know he or she or the pet dog did something wrong!

For custom SE you would need the Audio.play_se("SEfilenameWithoutExtension") script call then. Keep in mind this is valid for XP games, other versions use the Sound module instead.

If you got any ideas you might want to get included in hiddenchest by default, don't wait anymore and go post them here!

Of course, I will have to double check how complicated it would be to implement them in the engine...

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Haha, I'm so behind on the times and this is such a great gift to humanity!

Haven't tested this yet but there are a lot of old things I've half implemented which have been giving me problems. Resolution problems, input problems, tilemap problems, cross-compatibility problems, enough things to make me want to rip my hair out lol. The Frankenstein project I have put together dealing with all these features isn't 100% stable, not because I can't do it but because I've got a million other things going on. In other words...

It sounds like, with what you and ancurio have done, I might unimplement some things and migrate to this instead. I've tried with multiple scripts, I've tried utilizing SFML and Ruby, JRuby, Java, etc. I've tried a lot of things but I'm assuming this probably works better than what I'm currently standing here with. If you can't tell, I'm excited!

Thank you ahead of time, I'm getting ready to check this out right now!

Hiddenchest features RGSS stuff, there are just few other additions beside the basics for any RGSS version, except that RGSS 1 also includes several RGSS 3 features now as I have mentioned before. The only part that might be confusing at the beginning would be the conf file, but it does include comments explaining its settings. F1 opens the gamepad (and keyboard) section, F2 shows the fps.

To install you just need the hiddenchest 32 or 64 bit version and the dll_bit_here_full zip file, unzip the executable snd a directory in the game project's root directory, then uncompress the dll zip contents in the dll_bit_version_ directory. At the end you would need to click on your preferred executable, either some exe or _console.exe. The 800 or hires suffixes just indícate the maximum resolution available, hires still starts at 800 * 608 px but can be increased up to 1280 * 800 px.

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It seems I managed to increase the weather sprites, add a default RPG::Cache method for loading Faces, and add a brand new method called module_attr_accessor. What does this method do? It lets you create getter and setter methods for any instance @variable you create in a module! If you know what attr_accessor does for a class, then you will understand the module_attr_accessor does the same job for a module!

Since I am not 100% it works on any support OS but Linux, where I have been fiddling with it for a while, I cannot say I am ready to release it for the masses or gangs or the four alley cats that follow this thread.

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Terms.critical_hit and Terms.critical_hit=
(critical_hit will be used by RPG::Sprite during animations, especifically battle animations.)

Backdrop.keep_bitmap # Makes a copy of the game screen
Backdrop.blur_bitmap # Makes a blurred copy of the game screen
Backdrop.bitmap # Access to the bitmap created with any of the previous script calls
Backdrop.clear_bitmap # Clear that bitmap

Tonight or early this morning, I have uploaded two different custom map resolution fixes for XP and VX. The first script is ye old friend that has been with us since the early releases of this engine, the VX version is the newcomer here. I just recently noticed how necessary it was to adapt VX to higher resolutions so I started working on it and recently finished the script. It did not take as long as it did when I crafted the XP version. Of course, it does not mean it fixes everything, but you could say it is a good start indeed. Regarding VX Ace it seems it does not need any help from any custom script, still, I could be wrong so bug reports would be welcome, guys.

As of today it is only available as a separate Ruby file with rb extension. You can download it from your preferred online file hosting service and open it with any text editor.

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